


A Paranormal Miracle

by memeshxdow



Series: Human AU [1]
Category: Luigi's Mansion (2001), Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario & Luigi RPG (Video Games), Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
Genre: (I tried), (also uhh consider this like a part of its own thing cause i developed the universe too well), (good goin Gaia), (more tags shall be added as i add drabbles to this), (well uh suffice to say this was more or less written on impulse so it may not be that good), Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Biting, Blood, Gen, Injury, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memeshxdow/pseuds/memeshxdow
Summary: In the midst of a particularly dangerous zombie outbreak simply known as the Shroob virus, King Boo finds himself cornered.. until he finds that he can revive the fallen with a very unusual method.For now, he is stuck with the relatively minor journalist he's saved this way, the Koopa Kronicle's former field journalist Kylie Koopa, as he goes across the Kingdoms to try and stop the Shroob virus from zombifying anyone else, while in the process attempting to deal with the loss of his own Kingdom.{ This is probably going to be a series of drabbles based in my own Human AU of the Mario universe. Like my other AU, this one combines the Mario & Luigi RPGS, Paper Mario, and normal universes together. Except this particular series of drabbles happens to take place in a zombie apocalypse. }





	A Paranormal Miracle

**Author's Note:**

> { The first drabble here is actually from a writing prompt on tungle that I did a while back, but I'm feeling pretty proud of this enough that I thought it wouldn't hurt to put here. Also, this is edited from the original post.
> 
> Uhh.. If you're a little weirded out by zombies and the like, this is probs not the fic for you. Just putting that out there. (I'm no good at warnings like this ;n;) 
> 
> Original post here: memeshxdow.tumblr.com/post/172128423761/once-again-i-got-struck-by-inspiration-so-have }

“Umhf!” 

Ruby held at his head after bumping into the corner of the old room, silently hoping that the few nails sticking out of the broken, dilapidated wall he had backed into hadn’t stained his unnaturally white hair with the color he was named for. A deep, throbbing knock sounded outside of the wooden, barricaded door, which due to its rotten state might just be broken down by the horde outside. Trembling, the monarch tried to think of literally anything else but zombies, trying to think of the past to distract himself from his overwhelming fear. 

King “Boo” Ruby was formerly a monarch of a place only known to those with supernatural abilities, with things like a special sort of anxiety that causes invisibility to others, levitation when their powers were just powerful enough, and in his case, doing things like creating elaborate illusions like castles and mansions. Naturally, he was made the king of a society only called the Boos when he was old enough, trained to embrace the supernatural by his 49 most loyal servants over his childhood by them doing what they did best- joking around and pretending, and hiding of course. 

Well.. That was how it was until the dangerous mutation of the Mushroom Fever was finally created, by accident by his worst enemy Elvin Gadd, and nicknamed the Shroob Project or Shroob Virus. Suddenly, a dog mutated with the same abilities as the Boo society had bitten Gadd, who bit Luigi Mario, who escalated what was once an isolated incident into a powerful pandemic that first struck his people, then the rest of the world.

The lucky ones, like the Darklands, also called the Koopa Kingdom, were able to survive due to environments that weren’t that great for the undead hordes. In Bowser’s case, he had plenty of firepower and a volcano to help him, not to mention his strength and his firebreathing, and his children at his side with the same experience, built after years of fighting the menace Mario. Daisy had the deserts of Sarasaland to make the zombies into rotting heaps within a few hours, while Peasley and Queen Bean had their own army and also their moat around the Beanbean Castle’s territory, not to mention many locations where the zombies could easily fall or just couldn’t pierce due to nature’s limitations.

But not him, nor Peach, were so lucky. She had long gone into hiding in Bowser’s Kingdom with the last of her people as a last-minute peace attempt due to her kingdom collapsing after Mario disappeared and Luigi died, and he himself had gone on the run across fallen or safe kingdoms since his own had fallen to the outbreak.. and unlike Princess Peach, he had nowhere to stay for long periods of time. 

And now… he was all alone, likely to get eaten by the zombies that were about to break into the last bastion of peace he’d had for only a week.

Now… he was going to have the unthinkable happen to him. 

Ruby winced as the door finally splintered into shards of rotting wood and metal, and sparked up whatever meager magical energy he could summon to try and defend himself against the swarm of undead. His once pristine clothes, only a soft white and a few gold buttons, were a bit tattered and dusted with grey dust, rusty crimson, and even bits of green, as was the gloves he’d “borrowed” once from a Toad shop long after Peach’s kingdom fell, placed on shaky hands that now weakly sparked with magenta energy in an attempt to do something to prolong the inevitable. 

“G-gh… No matter what I do.. Just like _him_ and his _stupid_ brother… You still pursue me. Now you got me..” Ruby growled in some feeble attempt to intimidate like the old days, at a zombie that he couldn’t identify that well but was ultimately the one responsible for breaking the damn door down. That zombie, from what he could vaguely tell, had an old camera strapped to her neck, as well as what he could only describe as some detective’s hat or maybe a toy army soldier’s hat. There was also a pair of torn pink bows on the sides of her hat, and short yellow hair long dirtied by things he didn’t want to imagine. She also had a pink bandana, which was again pretty fitting for her, and a pair of torn jeans he assumed was ruined by the pure apocalypse that was the disastrous zombie pandemic. 

There wasn’t any more time to examine her, though, there was a lot more pressing matters to worry about!

Ruby was now fully surrounded by more zombies with equally dirty and ruined clothes and hair and grey, lifeless skin, and the journalist-looking zombie came closest to him first, grabbing his arm and causing him to cry out in shock and terror, as if intending to bite his arm and make him like the rest. 

“N-not today! Eat T-THIS!”

As a first instinct to try to defend himself, he went for her own arm and nearly twisted it out of its socket, sinking his sharp, fanged teeth into her flesh (and a pink dress shirt sleeve, not making the experience he was about to have any easier). Immediately he tasted what he could only describe as rotted meat through the fluffy cloth, and he shoved her into the crowd of zombies she had come with, coughing roughly and managing to find the crowbar he’d kept with him for breaking into shops when he needed it. 

_Ugh… that tasted… horrible! What if I get infected with the Shroob virus?! …Huh?!_

Ruby blinked his reddish-magenta eyes in confusion at the sight he saw as soon as he’d grabbed the crowbar and stood back up to his 5-foot-height, hearing the zombies all go deathly silent instead of their hungry moans. The zombie he’d bitten had fallen straight as a plank, as if she had been in the morgue of someplace in rigor mortis, and he saw what skin she still had start to transition from a sickly grey to a ghostly white, then to a cold blue, and finally back to the peach-golden color that the zombie evidently was meant to have as a living person. The bite mark that must’ve infected her soon came back to its red color, seemingly about to bleed once more from where it had bitten her neck. It wasn’t near the jugular… but it sure shocked Ruby for sure, and it had made all the zombies make a huge clearing around him and the former zombie. 

All was silent as the former Boo King approached the now unconscious woman, whom of which Ruby just then noticed had a big, pink-and-white backpack like many who lived in Koopa societies around the world, and scuffed-up pink heels he swore was out of style long ago. To his shock, she began to groan very weakly, as if she were going to wake up…

…and reddened, dusty brown eyes finally opened, fluttering open gently like the shutters of a camera lens. Almost like clockwork, she sat up and put her hand to her now bleeding wound, blinking and looking around in bewilderment until he eyes landed on Ruby, gazing at his clothes that just screamed ghostly white and royal. She only tilted her head at him, as if expecting him to know how to voice whatever answers she needed.

“H- h-huh…? M-my.. I t-thought.. I…” she began in a confused but very soft voice, but she was interrupted by an uproar of moans from the zombies who had realized she was potentially now free game. Her eyes lit up with panic as she saw them begin to lunge towards her, remembering her last memory before her apparent savior interrupted the bad remembrance.

“HEY! Get away from her!” Ruby yelled, finally feeling the full force of magic surge through him with adrenaline and a sudden courage as well, with this weak sparks of magenta now a hurricane’s worth of magical energy. Lightning struck methodically around the journalist and Ruby, and as quick as that attack, Ruby grabbed the Koopa woman and disappeared, appearing outside of the now ruined hideout to see pale moonlight and tons of clouds around. There wasn’t anymore zombies from what he knew, the haven he had chosen was a large apartment building that was crumbling down. So, he summoned a large spike ball, making it crash down in front of the apartment entrance to trap the zombies. 

It was now that the revived woman was put down gently, swaying a bit before fumbling for a nearby bench. Gently, Ruby helped her to sit on said bench, and she allowed herself to speak in a hoarse voice, still holding her wound a little awkwardly with her dirtied hand. “H-hah… thank you.. K-king Boo…” 

“..You knew of me?” 

The woman weakly nodded, letting the former monarch turn her around to get to her backpack. Inside was a few cans of food that were quite good and not dented at all, some extra camera film, and what Ruby had hoped for, a very well-put-together first aid kit. The first aid kit was taken out of the backpack very carefully by Ruby, and he began rummaging through it somewhat. 

“Y-yeah.. At least e-enough to know the epidemic b-began in your Kingdom…” the woman said, wincing visibly due to how bad her throat seemed to hurt. Well, both outside AND inside, in this case, from how her voice was so soft Ruby could barely hear it. 

“..Yes, it did,” Ruby responded, taking a deep breath as he felt his anxiety already begin to flare up, mainly because he didn’t know the woman had been spying on his people. Usually, he and his people scared off most journalists! “..Were you spying on my people, like the rest of your sort?” 

“M-my sort…? Ah… Y-you mean journalists! N-no… I q-questioned.. the Toad people near your s-settlement before… the pandemic s-spread..” she explained, although she had to stop for a minute or two as she did so since her through felt so weak. “B-but.. I t-thought I… turned…?” 

“Uh… That may be a long story, I’m afraid. But I do know that my pest of a nemesis was the first, after patient zero, to be infected.. What do you last remember?” Ruby kept his voice stern and didn’t gaze upon the woman too long, somehow feeling that her voice, as weak as it was, felt quite familiar to him now. Carefully, he took some gauze and disinfectant, which was still good, and started gently poking the woman’s neck wound with a clean cloth he’d found in the kit to get the disinfectant on the wound. 

“…I w-was in the Mushroom Kingdom.. a-and I was g-going to question a shopkeeper… w-when we g-got.. ambushed. Oh, r-raspberries.. It was t-terrible..” 

Ruby gave her a questioning look, looking up from tending to the woman’s wound for a moment with his almost rose-colored eyes and a raised snowy eyebrow. “And?” 

“A-and… I only r-remember pain in my neck… a-after that, nothing… not til I w-woke up on the ground here..” the woman finished, removing her hat and attempting to move her bangs in a way that Ruby could only describe as a habitual movement- once she had done so, she had cheerfully smiled with her hand in a thumbs-up position aimed at the Boo King. “Say… y-you seemed pretty heroic, fella.. A bit… odd for you, isn’t it?”

Ruby huffed slightly and started wrapping gauze carefully around a folded bit of medical cotton on her neck, frowning enough that his fanged teeth started showing as he gracefully finished up caring for the Koopa journalist. “Times are different than before the Shroob virus, madam. To be honest.. I think I might have revived you somehow.” 

The woman blinked in shock, her mouth becoming a wavy, shocked frown in a sort of cartoonish way. “R-revived? Like necromancy??”

“..Perhaps. I’m not sure why, but when you lunged in to bite my arm.. I acted in self-defense and bit you back. No offense, but your rotten flesh tasted absolutely horrible.” Ruby made a face, half-gagging at the thought of the events of only minutes earlier that had not only saved him but revived the journalist he was patching up. He brushed a bit of his dirtied white hair out of the way and now pulled up the sleeve covering the woman’s right arm, the wound caused by his curiously sharp teeth more fresh and certainly pretty reddened by now. 

“Oh.. That. Why’d you bite me, silly? T-that seems… kind of strange…” 

“Good grief, for the sake of the Stars above, I was desperate!” Ruby argued in a sharp toned hiss, his eyes flashing violet in indignation at the woman along with his fanged-filled scowl and fuzzed-up eyebrows to complete the angered look. “You’re the one stupid enough to throw caution to the wind for some “scoop”!” 

“…A-ahah… You’re r-right.. Gee whiz, I-I’ve been nothing but… trouble, haven’t I, Your M-majesty…” the woman said softly, sighing and frowning a bit with regret in her soft brown eyes. “First I w-woulda eaten you… t-then I made you save m-me…” 

“..Actually, you might be a key factor… mostly, since you knew that things began in Evershade Valley. You’re not that bad of a reporter, hm, if you figured it out long before my annoyance of a nemesis?” 

The woman simply stared at him for a moment, glancing down at her camera before grinning at him in a determined way. “You sure bet!~ And I-I forgot to mention.. I-I’m Kylie Koopa… f-former ace reporter for the Koopa Kronicle..” 

“..And between us.. I’d just call me Ruby. That’s my actual name.. King Boo is merely a title, and not one I am able to have anymore. The Boo Kingdom has long fallen, so I have been roaming around looking for someone who can help actually stop this pandemic. 

And if you’re so kindly wondering.. We’re currently in an area closer to the port of Rogueport at the moment, for they are still zombie-less for the most part other than the outer areas beyond the Pianta Syndicate’s reach. We are in those outer areas, and I think I’ll have to restock on supplies _again_ when we get to Rogueport..” 

Kylie gasped softly, putting her left arm up and near her mouth in confusion and a hint of fear. “Whoa… I wandered _that_ far? Oh raspberries.. A-and.. your k-kingdom.. I’m s-so sorry..” 

“…and that is where we will have to part, Kylie. I am not letting you become a zombie twice out of your own brash stupidity. I’d suggest you stay there and attempt to contact Bowser from there. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” Ruby cut in, gaining an irritated look and an upset tone of voice that sounded a little more on the grieving side than angry this time. “I’d rather do my part of this alone. After losing my people… I cannot bear to do things with others in the equation, _lest they get bitten and turned!_ ” 

Kylie’s face fell, seeing the hurt clearly in Ruby’s eyes as a violet flash once again obscured his eyes’ true color before he stopped looking at her. His face was reddened, but only because he had begun to cry slightly. Kylie went quiet, glancing at the now completely covered bite wound on her right arm. It stung, sure, but it wasn’t as bad as how she regretting opening her mouth at the moment. The hat-clad journalist could only really wonder if she’d said something bad, when Ruby stood up and went back through her bag, managing to find a blanket of hers before he put the first aid kit back in and handed her the soft pink blanket, which was somewhat dirty but still okay to use. 

“..T-tomorrow.. we’re going to enter Rogueport. Get your rest, Kylie…” was all Ruby said, sounding and looking quite sullen in demeanor as he half-snapped this at Kylie before sitting on the other end of the bench to presumably go to sleep. Kylie then noticed he also had a pack of some sort that he might’ve grabbed earlier, and she realized the bulk of it was his large cape, a little roughed up from the two years of travel he’d had to do over the time of the terrible pandemic. 

“U-uh.. Goodnight then..” Kylie stammered out in a quiet voice, getting no reply as Ruby simply curled up on the bench under his cape without another word. The journalist silently slipped her backpack off and dug out a pen and her journal, scribbling down what she could before yawning and curling up herself. 

_– Well, old journal, you’re not gonna believe this…  
_

_According to little old King Boo– I mean, Ruby here… I opened a whole other can of Wigglers and almost bit him..  
_

_That’s right, my interview of the Toad shopkeeper grandmas didn’t work out. Not only did I fail to get the info I needed.. but apparently I done turned into a corpse while I was at it!  
_

_Not the first of my failures, for sure, but.. I can’t believe I was a dead walker this entire time!! I don’t know how long, but Ruby scratched my back and fully revived me like nothing happened! By biting me. Awkward, sure, but I still can’t believe that!  
_

_Well.. I still got the bite marks from then, they’re patched up now though.. the one from the zombie that ended my game, and in the biggest twist of my dead (ha, don't mind the pun) career, the one on my arm from him.. Gee whiz, I know he is a hell of a ghost whisperer… but I had no idea he was part Dry Bones like Bowser!  
_

_Ah, well.. At least I’m near a safe place where I can rest and all but.. I oughta try and scratch Ruby’s back.. Hopefully, maybe I can travel to Evershade Valley and try to see if I can’t figure out who patient zero was..  
_

_Goodnight, my dear journal.~ –_


End file.
